If you are part of a large fundraising team, you might be experiencing friction between team members. The database administrator is lamenting how the major gift officers never put notes in the database, and the major gift officer can’t understand why the database administrator can’t produce the simple report they asked for.
While everyone on the team wants to raise the most money for the nonprofit organization’s mission, they might struggle to agree on a path to achieve this. Each role thinks it is simple, but they look at the same problem from different vantage points.
If this sounds like your fundraising team, you aren’t alone. Database administrators live somewhere between the development department and the finance department. Database administrators tend to be more finance than fundraising and more data-driven, while major gift officers tend to be more people-driven and may care less about processes and procedures.
The most successful teams find a way to reduce friction between the two roles by finding ways to break down silos and create tools to ease tension and clarify communication. Automation can assist nonprofit organizations that want to build a fundraising team that merges the data and the people to raise the most money.
Tools like AutomateGenius can create exciting opportunities to reduce staff time and delight the whole fundraising team. While creating automation to assist in the fundraising office’s functions might seem overwhelming, many options exist to help.
In the recent webinar, Managing Large Fundraising Teams – Our Best Advice – Prenger Solutions Group, Nic Prenger and Andy Schroeder highlight some of these tools.
How Friction Shows Up in Development Offices
There are many ways friction can manifest in development offices. Often, it is caused by the two different viewpoints of database administrators and frontline fundraisers. Frustration usually comes when gift officers are unclear when asking for reports.
Database folks tend to be very literal, while gift officers may envision what they want to be produced but may not know the steps to extract that data. Gift officers may have a fundraising goal in mind, but other staff members may not know that goal. Another sticking point is last-minute requests for reports from the database or when major gift officers fail to include notes in donor records.
Database staff can sometimes be reluctant to change and want to build processes around the data, not the donor. Those who work in frontline fundraising understand that processes must make it as easy as possible for supporters to donate.
The best fundraising efforts keep donors at the heart of the fundraising campaign. For any fundraising strategy to be successful, a team must set goals that have both the donor and the data in mind.
Remember to involve all roles of the fundraising team in goal setting.
It is critical for all involved to understand that to produce correct reports, data must be clean. Bad data in or no data at all means insufficient or incorrect reports, which does not benefit anyone. Good donor relationships are based on truly knowing them and personalizing their donor experiences.
It is difficult to personalize things like direct mail appeals if fields like preferred name or salutation are blank in the database. Once data is clean in a CRM such as Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge, applications like AskGenius can help customize ask strings for each donor.
While it might seem like you want to get as much information as possible, fundraisers know that donors don’t want to fill in too many rows of personal information or click too many times to donate. While reducing friction between nonprofit team members is essential, don’t overlook reducing friction points on donation forms.
Tips to Improve Team Communication and Reduce Tension Between Roles
- Break down the silos by ensuring everyone understands what other roles do.
All fundraising roles and responsibilities are critical, but not everyone may understand them. Allow each role to present what it does and ask for what it needs to improve daily processes.
The database administrator may need the gift officer to add notes on the preferred salutation, or the gift officer might need the database administrator to reduce the number of fields on the donation form.
Your team may delight you with their ideas. Add this as an agenda item to weekly meetings or team retreats. Build in time for each member to understand how their role fits into the larger goals of the fundraising plan.
- Hold a post-mortem meeting.
After each fundraising event, direct mail appeal, or project, host a meeting with your fundraising team to discuss what went well and what ideas need improvement in the future.
- Use Incentives.
Assist the fundraising team in finding ways to make co-workers’ jobs easier. Use peer groups within each role, such as the Raiser’s Edge User Group on Facebook. You might ask in these groups how to motivate a fundraising team and see what ideas have worked for other nonprofit organizations.
How Systems and Processes Can Help Reduce Friction on Fundraising Teams
While each fundraising team member must play their part in communicating with others and working together toward a common goal, some tools can help. Automation tools can assist in reducing some of the sticking points and helping with donor management inside the database.
- Use automation to create an automatic digest e-mail.
- Use automation to add notes to donor records.
- Use automation to create a daily digest and draft donor emails.
Imagine a weekly digest e-mail that outlines all the gifts made by donors that week who are in your portfolio. Or an e-mail daily outlining all the gifts from major donors over $1,000.
These automated lists can assist in successful fundraising and meeting SMART goals for major gift officers and everyone on your team. Automation tools can feel like magic but can also be overwhelming if you are new to using them.
Fundraising tools like AutomateGenius can significantly impact your overall fundraising success.
After dedicating time to understanding how each role fits into the larger picture of development work, save time by using automation across functions. Automation tools can help with things like database cleanup and gift processing.
Consider adding a tool like AutomateGenius to your library of tools you may already be using for social media management or matching gifts. Improving the tools your nonprofit uses can truly have a powerful impact on your long-term fundraising efforts.
With minor changes, your development team will delight donors and raise more money for your nonprofit mission. Start reducing friction with these tips today.
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